Smart Stuff: Can’t Live Without It.

Today’s headline:

The CIA is using popular TVs, smartphones and cars to spy on their owners.

There are Smart Shoes (auto-lacing. Wow.), Smart Watches, Smart Glasses, Smart Washers and Smarter Driers.

I’m at the point where I can’t do my banking without the latest bullshit $800 smartphone from Apple or whomever.

Everything is so convenient. Not secure, no ma’am, but very, very convenient.

And Feature-rich. You can do so much. You probably don’t even know eighty percent of what your smart products are capable of. Read that manual, make that bastard sing.

Cable-ready Smart TV? Won’t miss the latest Academy Awards and ridiculous screw-ups. Big fun. The Superbowl? Every year see which corporate human product beats which corporate human product. Live press conferences? Get to see the latest corrupt dipshit blubbering from the Oval office.

Some kid made fun of my phone the other day. Again.

I have an old fashioned flip phone from before World War II. I told him to go fuck himself, but the culture is changing and I’ll probably have to get a goddamn smartphone, big data package, lotsa texting, alarms and a camera and direct access to pornography wherever I am. Join the herd.

“Oh, look honey, a text from our five year old granddaughter.”

How have I survived? Until now, if I’m traveling and I get lost, I look at a map or ask a friendly native. A few years ago in Paris, I kept running into people who were wandering around exhausted, peering into smartphones, and they put them down long enough to plead, “Can you tell me which direction the river Seine is?” Lost like hell.

If we’re hungry in Italy, instead of standing on a busy corner and browsing all the places within a six-block radius, reading Yelp blather, we walk around the block and pick a restaurant. I have never been disappointed in my choice. 

I’ll cave. I’ll sign up for another subscription, more bills, headaches, more calls to “customer service”, more ridiculous emails with terrific savings and offers, the chance that one of my devices may be hacked, unauthorized charges, accounts drained.

When I’m ready to buy I’ll have to ask for help from my younger friends, best phone, best company, best package, average monthly bill, and hope that for once I’ll get a straight answer. Not likely.

Why aren’t people who drink smart water smart enough to know that crap isn’t making them any smarter?

Stand behind them in line sometime.